Inchmahome (Gael. 'island of my little Colman'), the larger of the two islets in the Lake of Monteith, Port of Monteith parish, SW Perthshire, 3 ¾ miles E by S of Aberfoyle and 5 furlongs SW of Port of Monteith village. With an utmost length and breadth of only 1 1/8 and 1 furlong, it lies on the unruffled water near Inch Talla, level but 'plump with rich foliage, brooding like great birds of calm. You somehow think of them as on, not in the lake, or like clouds lying in a nether sky - "like ships waiting for the wind." You get a coble, and a yauld old Celt, its master, and are rowed across to Inchmahome, the Isle of Rest. Here you find on landing huge Spanish chestnuts, one lying dead, others standing stark and peeled, like gigantic antlers, and others flourishing in their viridis senectus; and in a thicket of wood you see the remains of a monastery of great beauty, the design and workmanship exquisite. You wander through the ruins, overgrown with ferns and Spanish filberts, and old fruit trees, and at the corner of the old monkish garden you come upon one of the strangest and most touching sights you ever saw - an oval space of 18 feet by 12, with the remains of a double row of boxwood all round. What is this? It is called in the guide-books "Queen Mary's Bower;" but, besides its being plainly not in the least a bower, what could the little Queen, then five years old, and "fancy free," do with a bower? It is plainly the Child-Queen's Garden, with her little walk, and its rows of boxwood, left to themselves for three hundred years. Yet, without doubt, " here is that first garden of her simpleness." Fancy the little, lovely royal child, with her four Marys, her playfellows, her child maids-of-honour, with their little hands and feet, and their innocent and happy eyes, pattering about that garden all that time ago, laughing, and running, and gardening as only children do and can. As is well known, Mary was placed by her mother in this Isle of Rest' from soon after the battle of Pinkie, Sept. 1547, till towards the end of the following February she left for Dumbarton, thence to take ship to France. Thus the author of Rab and his Friends; and Mr Hutchison, in Trans. Highl. and Ag. Soc. * (1879-80), more minutely describes 'the quaint and simple arrangements of this mediæval garden - the three straggling boxwood trees, evidently grown from the boxwood edgings of a former oval flower-bed still discernible. They are 20 ½ feet high, and upwards of 3 in girth at 1 foot from the ground, where they branch into several stems, the result probably of early clipping. In the centre of the plot is a quaint old thorn tree, 22 feet high, and 16 inches in girth, but much destroyed by the prevalent west winds which sweep across the island, and to whose influence it is much exposed.' In 1238 Walter Comyn, Earl of Menteith, obtained authority from Pope Gregory IX. to build an Augustinian priory on the island of 'Inchmaquhomok.' The church was dedicated to Colman, an Irish Pict, who founded the monastery of Dromore in Ireland prior to 514. Robert Bruce was at least three times at Inchmahome, in 1306, 1308, and 1310; and here in 1363 his son, David II., widower, wedded Margaret Logie, widow. First Pointed in style, and measuring 115 feet by 36, the church consisted of a three-bayed nave, a N aisle, an aisleless choir, and a square four-storied bell-tower. The western doorway is deeply recessed and richly sculptured; and the choir retains a piscina, sedilia, and an interesting though mutilated monument (circa 1294) with recumbent effigies of Walter Stewart, Earl of Menteith, and his Countess, his legs being crossed crusader-wise, and her arm twined around his neck. S of the church are some remains of the dormitory, refectory, and vaulted kitchen; but the cloisters in 1644 made way for an awkward mausoleum, run hurriedly up to receive the corpse of John Graham, Lord Kilpont, who was murdered in Montrose's camp at Collace by one of his own vassals, James Stewart of Ardvoirlich. Lord Kilpont's son, the second and last Earl of Airth and Menteith, disposed of Inchmahome to the Marquis of Montrose, with whose descendant, the Duke, it still remains.—Ord. Sur., sh. 38,1871. See Monteith; the Rev. W. M. Stirling's Notes, historical and descriptive, on the Priory of Inchmahome (Edinb. 1815); Dr John Brown's 'Queen Mary's Child-Garden,' in Horæ Subsecivæ (Edinb. 1858); and Dr William Fraser's Red Book of Menteith (2 vols., Edinb., 1880).
* Where he also gives the height of the largest sycamore. Spanish chestnut, and walnut, all three near the western doorway of the priory. as 80. 85, and 80 feet, their girth at 1 foot from the ground being 135/8, 195/8, and 10 feet.
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